Create Local User Accounts on Windows with Ansible Playbooks

Learn how to automate the creation and management of local user accounts on Windows systems using Ansible’s win_user module. Follow our detailed Playbook example for easy setup.

How to Create a local user on Windows-like systems with Ansible?

I'm going to show you a live Playbook with some simple Ansible code.

I'm Luca Berton and welcome to today's episode of Ansible Pilot

Ansible creates the user account

> ansible.windows.win_user Manages local Windows user accounts

Today we're talking about Ansible module win_user.

The full name is ansible.windows.win_user, which means that is part of the collection of modules specialized to interact with Windows target host.

It's a module pretty stable and out for years.

It works in Windows and Windows Server operating systems.

It manages local Windows user accounts.

For Linux target use the user module instead.

Parameters

name _string_ - user name

state _string_ - present/absent

password _string_ - cleartext password

description _string_ - description of the group

groups _list_ - list of groups to adds or removes

update_password _string_ - always / on_create

password_never_expires _boolean_ - no / yes

password_expired _string_ - yes - change at next login / no

account_locked / account_disabled - no /yes

The only required is "name", which is the user name.

The "state" parameter allows us to create or delete a user, in our use case the default it's already set to "present" to create a user.

The "password" set the password in cleartext. So easily specify what password assign to the user, no hash function are needed.

The "description" parameter allows you to specify a description of the user, it's not mandatory but sometimes is useful.

The "groups" parameter allows you to add or remove the user from this list of groups.

The "update_password" parameter specifies when the module will update the user password. "always" option will update passwords if they differ, "on_create" will only set the password for newly created users.

Let me highlight also some parameters about password expiration "password_never_expires" to sets the password to never expire, or "password_expired" force the user to change the password at the next login.

You could also lock or disable the account using "account_locked" and "account_disabled" parameters.

Links

[ansible.windows.win_user](https://docs.ansible.com/ansible/latest/collections/ansible/windows/win_user_module.html)

## Playbook

How to create a local user on Windows-like systems with Ansible Playbook.

I'm going to show you how to automate the creation of the "example" user member of the Users group on my Playbook Windows machine.

code

``yaml


---
name: windows user add
  hosts: all
  vars:
    usr_name: 'example'
    usr_password: 'EfY#Qs9*BWy9?'
    usr_groups: "Users"
  tasks:
    - name: create local user
      ansible.windows.win_user:
        name: "{{ usr_name }}"
        password: "{{ usr_password }}"
        groups: "{{ usr_groups }}"
        update_password: on_create
        password_expired: true



execution

``bash

ansible-pilot $ ansible-playbook -i virtualmachi